The primary purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the concept of helplessness in
the Freudian theory, articulating it with three clinical case studies. The patients were
admitted at the Intensive Care Unit (UTI) of the Barros Barreto University Hospital, in the
city of Belem - Pará, in the Northern part of Brazil. Transference between patients ant
therapist allowed us to identify and work the intense feeling of helplessness when faced with
so much suffering during their hospitalization. We believe that, by listening to their suffering,
being it spoken by words or by any possible language in face of the reality derived from the
actual use of devices and probes we could aid them to symbolize those painful experiences.
As far as counter transference is concerned the hospital environment led us to search a
broader literature more useful when working in a strictly medical environment. In such cases,
we support the idea that, although we are not working in the classical psychoanalytical
setting, transference and a good holding and handling of the patients, allow them to act
creatively on their internal and external world, and seek to overcome, though never
definitively, their helplessness, giving new meanings to their illness, their hospitalization and
even in their lives.
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